A new-born niece came into my extended family recently. I got the task for looking into setting up a college education fund for her. I know about 529 plans. Every state has at least one plan. Some states have several plans. I quickly identified Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 plan as the best plan for my niece. […]
Latest Blog Posts
Conventional Wisdom "Don’t Buy a Dividend" Is Wrong
I mentioned this last year in my post 3 Reminders About Year-End Mutual Fund Distributions. I see the conventional wisdom “don’t buy a distribution” is still going strong. Vanguard reiterated this conventional wisdom in its blog post The record date: Not a tune you can dance to in early December. But the conventional wisdom is […]
Money Is Fungible
Money can be moved from one purpose to another. It doesn’t remember where it came from.
Grace Period and Double-Cycle Billing
Twitter brought my attention to an article on SmartMoney (link no long working). It’s another “banks are out there to get you” article. It alleges that some banks are exploiting a loophole in the “CARD Act” for double-cycle billing. I’m sorry to say that the journalist was misled by her sources. Whoever fed her the story […]
Alliant Credit Union: Bumpy Ride to High Yield
I wanted to have my money earn more interest than what it does in a money market account. So I joined Alliant Credit Union. Alliant Credit Union is the 7th largest U.S. credit union based on asset size, with more than 250,000 members. It was originally United Airlines Employees’ Credit Union. Now anybody can join […]
If It’s Too Expensive, Don’t Buy
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, after reading so many reports in the media about evil banks, this nugget of wisdom dawned on me: If it’s too expensive, don’t buy. You must be saying “Duh!” but let me explain. No, I’m not referring to people buying homes they can’t afford, although that would apply […]
What Is Your Marginal Tax Rate?
If I ask you point-blank "what is your marginal tax rate?" do you know the answer? If you think you know, write it down. If you are not sure, take your best guess. After you finish reading this post, see if you got it right. The marginal tax rate is the tax you pay on […]
Treasure Hunting in Secondary CDs
I mentioned in a previous post Short-Term Fixed Income: CDs vs Bond Funds that I would buy CDs as short-term fixed income investment for my solo 401(k) account. Because Fidelity administers my solo 401(k) plan, I can buy only what’s available through Fidelity. I looked at new-issue brokered CDs. The yields are lower than the […]
It’s Not 529’s (Or 401k’s) Fault
Ever since I switched from reading Financial Times to Wall Street Journal (FT subscription ran out; no option to use airline miles), I started encountering more and more sob stories. On Tuesday I mentioned the story about laid-off employees burning through their severance and turning down job offers. On Wednesday I read this article about […]
Marriage Tax Penalty and Unit of Taxation
The marriage tax penalty refers to the fact when two people marry, they pay more taxes than they do when they are single. This happens when the two persons have roughly the same income. The mirror image of the marriage tax penalty is the marriage tax bonus, that is when two spouses have disparate income […]